Rating

7Overall

7
Importance

7
Innovation

6
Style

Recommendation

Journalist Chrystia Freeland’s exhaustive research into the rise of the ultrawealthy class provides a bird’s-eye view of the global economy and a harbinger of where the world is headed. She presents history, modern data, facts and occasional snippets of conversations verging on gossip. Finding nuggets gleaned by eavesdropping on cocktail party chatter in an intellectual book is fun, and it illustrates clearly why you should be less concerned about the gap between the 1% and the 99%, and more worried about the disparity between the rich 1% and the far richer 0.01%. With its insights into the lifestyles and ideations of the “superrich” – plus its snapshots of the plight of the middle class and the increasing peril of the impoverished – this analysis contains more socioeconomic information than a semester of graduate school. Though the narrative is disjointed, Freeland presents solid, thought-provoking insights. getAbstract recommends her work to anyone concerned about the social and political impact of concentrated wealth and power.

In this summary, you will learn

What separates the rich 1% from the richest 0.01%

Why the gap between these groups continues to widen

How the fortunes of the ultrarich affect the other 99.99%

Summary

There’s Wealthy, and Then There’s Really Wealthy Globalization and technology have given rise to a stratum of society made up of the superelite and the ultrawealthy. These individuals typically are young and make $20 million to $40 million annually; their fortunes are self-made, not inherited...